Tuesday, April 8, 2014

A-Z Challenge 2014: ‘G’ for Ginger & Garlic

G for GingerGoogle Images

Using ginger or garlic adds a special flavour to many cuisines around the world. Combine the two and you have an unbeatable combo in flavour as well as health. I bring you these two roots whose names begin with ‘G’.

GINGER

I use grated ginger while making most of the curries and dals. Half a teaspoon of ginger extract mixed with half a teaspoon of honey is an excellent cough relief measure. Ginger adds flavour to tea and makes an awesome drink, especially in the rainy season. Ginger extract added to lemon juice prevents nausea.

Ginger produces a hot, fragrant kitchen spice. Mature ginger rhizomes are fibrous and nearly dry. The juice from old ginger roots is extremely potent and is often used as a spice in Indian recipes, and is a quintessential ingredient of Chinese, Korean, Japanese and many South Asian cuisines for flavouring dishes such as seafood or goat meat and vegetarian cuisine.

Powdered dry ginger root is typically used as flavouring for recipes such as gingerbread, cookies, crackers and cakes, ginger ale, and ginger beer. Candied ginger, or crystallized ginger, is the root cooked in sugar until soft, and is a type of confectionery.

G for GarlicGoogle Images

GARLIC

I use grated or chopped garlic to many of my food preparations. It adds an excellent flavour. Garlic rasam is a hot favourite at home.

Garlic is widely used around the world for its pungent flavour as a seasoning or condiment. The garlic plant's bulb is the most commonly used part of the plant. Garlic cloves are used for consumption (raw or cooked) or for medicinal purposes. They have a characteristic pungent, spicy flavour that mellows and sweetens considerably with cooking.

Both Ginger & Garlic have many common health benefits:

•They are excellent aids to digestion.
•They are very good at fighting colds, coughs and other viral infections. Regular intake of both in cooked foods keeps infections away. (NOTE: Please understand here that I am not suggesting that a person suffering from viral fever should be fed this. A sick person’s digestive system will not be strong enough to handle ginger & garlic.)
•They help reduce stomach cramps during menstruation.
•Ginger & Garlic added to the diet of pregnant women helps reduce morning sickness.
•It’s also recommended to the diet of women post child birth.

When I was little for belly aches my mom had us chew on fresh ginger. For garlic she had a glass jar that had garlic soaking in white rum that we got a teaspoon of at the first sign of a cough of cold. LOL. It worked.